Western Canadian bards challenge, revive and redeem

Western Canadian bards challenge, revive and redeem

By Dennis E. Bolen, Special to The SunApril 25, 2014

Can one assuage through verse the grief of lost love? Can an entire life be held in one poetic hand to turn over and reconsider? Can the torsion of an immigrant experience be remediated by chronicling in lyrical metre? To judge by the vitality of some recent work standing out from the long ranks of western Canadian poetry these days, yes. To wit, a trio of collections to challenge, revive and redeem:

In her new book Designated Mourner, Catherine Owen’s interior musings are a potent brew of emotions — not least rage — that relate to and connect with mortality. In a signature piece called ‘Nine Hours Away From the Sixty-sixth Avenue Turnoff’ she rigidly frames the personal death-talk we all have with ourselves: ‘Me staring at the eyes of each/driver in every car that passes us, asking, is it you my executioner,/is it you/my victim.’ Ostensibly a lament about a death-tragedy, both the poem and the book are ultimately a protracted ponder of what it is to be alive while knowing that an end awaits. Amid the sombreness, refreshment arrives via timely observation of how silly things can be, such as despairing of the picayune concerns that might distract us on our downward journey: ‘overcooked broccoli, too many pairs of socks under the/tree ... nothing I want to be thinking of as I die.’

Throughout, the depth of feeling is near palpable, so much so that one gets the impression these songs of departed love could be written of someone alive as well. After all, lost love is lost love: ‘And the pain doesn’t stop, no I’m lying now, it stops,/I forget ... after the singing,/It returns again—.’ In her capable poetic hands — Owen is author of nine books of verse and criticism — emotions find crystalline expression and these pieces attain indelible life for their deft separating of what is truly important from the emotional chaff that occupies a typical life.

Early on in Mary Ann Moore’s first full-length collection, Fishing For Mermaids, there is an offering of Frida Kahlo’s artistic advice — ‘Go to the centre of the fire./See what’s there./It may not be as hot as you think./It may be blue cold’ — and this ethic is finely sprinkled throughout the book. We find intriguing contrasts of atmosphere and action; in ‘Why I Can’t See You’, a woman bites her tongue not to react negatively when her lover’s ex shows up. Then we’re treated to a grab-bag of slapstick bad happenings that do not involve love relations: a flooded laundry room, a slip and fall, head injury, an eyeglass-thieving bird. The poem is whimsical and grave, rhythmic and spare, presenting an eloquent primer on how to deal with oneself.

Moore’s writing celebrates the joyously human and the mythological too — ‘It is sirens who speak out,/intimidate men,/dive to the depths,/remind me of my watery beginnings,/the mermaid Madonna,/Sappho’s Isle —/my kind of angels’ — and we are never far from solemnity. A doting grandmother instructs in the first line of ‘Making a Face’ that if you do as the title suggests, one’s features might freeze that way. The subsequent lines: ‘That must be what happened to her/when her baby Donald died/of rheumatic fever,/his twin stillborn eighteen months before,’ bring us to ground in an undeniably reverent way. ‘How to be a Poet’ employs a round of bard name-dropping — ‘Carry a small, pocket-sized notebook. Read Neruda, Rilke, Crozier and Lane. Do nothing.’ — forgivable here because of the obvious benefit these influences have had on this most impressive book of poetry.

Published by Turnstone Press in late 2013, Lydia Kwa’s Sinuous wrestles with identity; racial, sexual, familial. Her most thrilling verse occurs when relating inner turmoil: ‘uncommon destroyer ... she has the feel of an angel or/bodhisattva ... could she rescue me from Bad Daughter syndrome?/where being away signifies failure/and failure to conform signifies disloyalty?’ Always at the heart of the matter is the struggle for self: ‘one day one day one day/another generation/may transcend fear’s paranoid grasp.’ Thematically throughout there is the reconciliation of the inner schisms caused by where one has been, where one comes from, where one is going, where one is now. As an examination of individual place, and the value of memory in defining the self, it serves the book well.

Author of three novels — including the B.C. Book prize shortlisted ‘The Walking Boy’ — and a previous poetry collection, Lydia Kwa lives and writes in Vancouver. While perhaps suffering somewhat with a preponderance of obscure, not-likely-to-be-widely-understood notation — ‘I look for things I failed to discover in my childhood/cordyceps, fu ling, dong quai/white cloud’s ears, wong lo kat ...’ — the poetry is adorned by Kwa’s well-drawn sense of place, detail, and occasional glib local assessments: ‘even Hello Kitty has it rough on East Pender.’

Dennis E Bolen’s poetry collection Black Liquor was published last year by Caitlin Press.

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